Manufacturer

Our visit to Player 1 Video Game Bar

Things that go well together like peas and carrots (to quote Mr Gump) is Beer and Video games. So we put this to the test and visited the Player 1 Video Game Bar in Orlando Florida. Here we take the tour of everything there.

We started at the bar....

This video includes Tara Cadman pouring us some drinks. We chatted to Tara the Bar Manager and she served up two special drinks for us too. 2nd drink was very awesome - a Nintendo Inspired King Koopa, a blackcurrant mead mixed with Sprite.

This video gives you more of a circling tour of the place showing a whole range of the cabs, extensive drinks range and very importantly the cool bar area:

So what can we say. Touring around the place there were cabs from our favourite eras - the 70s - 90s and we spent a good few hours playing and looking over what was on offer.

One of the delights was to see an actual working Dragons Lair cabinet in amazing order - fully working with no issues and the colours of the marquee and cab iteself were almost brand new.

Now having seen this again in Stranger Things 2 we were reminded of the heartache of the game from back in the day. Just so hard when you haven't played in such a while. All I can say is I'm glad it was on freeplay - so many quarters would have been lost otherwise.

There must have been at least 50 cabs in the place so it was difficult play every single one of them because we wanted to!

But we focused on a few and played them alot. Namely The Simpsons, Operation Wolf, Indiana Jones & the Temple of Doom, Pac Man, Mortal Kombat II, Spy Hunter and Terminator 2 were our favorites and we gave them about 3 hours of play.

Other aspects to point out (some of which mentioned in the above video tour) are the number of pinball tables including a beautiful Spy Hunter table. Also the cool gaming booths you could sit in a play Street Fighter 2 in. Also a SEGA Saturn or two to hook up and other retro consoles in this booth area. Here you could hire games - or as a member just lend out and play off a huge library of games.

The vibe of the place

It's important to mention about the atmosphere we experienced - because it was really positive. Obvously we were 'out of towners' and whilst this is close to Disney Springs, Orlando and Magic Kingdom even - this is more a locals place.

However - this was a postive thing especially if you are wiped out by too much of the theme parks! No this feels like from the first visit we'd be at home here which is a really great thing.

A real nice welcome both at the entrance and bar and that was even before we said we were from GamesYouLoved (We wanted to test this!). And when we introduced GYL we had some really good chats about the place and how it got set up and what the owners had put into the place. These guys are people who love games and it shows.

I think even if you wanted somewhere in central Orlando to just hang out this would be a great place for you. It has a really nice chilled and unpretencious atmosphere. Sitting at the very long bar is a nice experience. The artwork all around you influenced by retro games and movies is breathtaking.

The rest of the time other than gaming and filming the place - we spent chatting at the bar with the staff including Tara of course and a few of the regulars. Including one who even did a magic trick for us! His name is Jafo and a great magician too!. Check out his YouTube channel here: youtube.com/channel/UCaf36yepqFlrn5QVfA_jVtA

We even spoke to one of the regulars and the membership there. His name was Sean and he gave us a great sense of the place:

Overall I'd give this a 9.75/10 for the overall experience. It's not just a few arcade cabs with a bar chucked in. The whole place from the entrance, the drinks/bar itself to even the toilets are decorated with the gamer in mind. The cabs though...are truly legendary.